Speaking of human-rights, how nice of you to maybe -possibly-in-the-future-sometime-not-right-now give those prisoners you kept in Guantanamo a possibly-fair trial.
Hypocritical bullshit is what those backhanded judgmental insults to China coming from you is. Especially since they are basically your bank right now.
I'm calling "off-topic" here. The post wasn't about human-rights. However, there is a minor difference in your example from mine. Guantanamo bay prisoners were captured in foreign lands (most of them, anyway) under the pretense of war (let's assume this for the sake of argument). China, according to what I understand, has a general problem with its own people. Generally speaking, Guantanamo Bay prisoners aren't even US citizens. Your argument falls somewhat flat on that aspect. On the second point, Messiah Obama has decreed that the prison there will be closed within a year. China hasn't made any such declaration. Your argument is flat, like the tires on my bicycle.
Wouldn't it be more fun to go to their house and either serve them with a civil suit for a $Million+ or just beat their computer into a cube with a sledge hammer?
Wouldn't it be more fun to just beat the spammer to death with said sledgehammer? And since there would have to be millions with a motive to kill him, they'd have a lot of trouble pinning it on you.
I just have to make sure the court jurisdiction where I'm in trouble gets a major virus infection so that they suspend arrests for minor offenses (why are they making arrests for minor things?) and put off trials.
I can't help but think that Mr. Paine would, at least prior to January 20, have been considered some sort of terrorist, were he to have published "Common Sense" today.
Now, to be fair, since then, that's probably been downgraded to mere "criminal". Still, not the smartest thing to be voicing support for a dude who advocated the overthrow of the government of the United States, albeit of a different form than it is today.
That being said, I agree. (Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.)
No, I'm pretty sure he'd still be considered a terrorist. The Obama administration will not make anything better, and will probably make things worse.
FYI, he was considered a terrorist of sorts in his own time (a seditionist, actually) by the effective gov't, King George.
If Thomas Paine is "currently" wrong, then, baby, I don't wanna be right.
In spite of the right wing screeching about Obama being a far-left stealth candidate, he's a cleaner, more efficient Bill Clinton, without the personal ethical lapses to interfere with his objectives.....
Um...none that we know of...yet. You never know. Obama seems like a pretty upstanding guy, but so did Clinton at first. Anyway, to me, Bubba getting blow jobs from interns is his own business -- as far as I am concerned, if it put a smile on his face and enabled him to face the country's business in a more relaxed and less stressed frame of mind, all the better. It was the way he tried to fudge, obfuscate, and lie his way out of it that diminished his stature in my eyes. A flawed man, but we had a pretty good 8 years under him -- a fantastically great 8 years compared to the last 8.
Have you forgotten that he and the vice president has staffed the justice department with riaa/mpaa goons?
Not only will this pass and become law here even if it violates the constitution, but there will be a roundup of file sharers afterwards.
Obama is just better at hiding his improprieties. He's a silver-tongued devil, if I ever saw one. Biden has been one of the biggest copywrong hounds out there, for years. Just pray Berman or Hollings never get into executive office. Those two are already dangerous where they are.
Maybe some of the more well-spoken amongst our numbers should've gotten out there and started bringing this shit to the attention of the unwashed masses before the elections. You know, all of those technically savvy college kids who inexplicably LOVE Obama because they're told to.
I'm normally a pro-lifer, but I think abortion really should've been encouraged in the past 25 years or so. Noone to make conservatives abort, but the liberals seem fond of it, so they would just cut down their numbers.
Don't blame me. I wanted Ron Paul to win (unfortunately any vote cast for him would've been a wasted vote). Neither of the two (uniparty) frontrunning candidates would've gone for what was best for me.
Is the chip design patented? Do you have to purchase from them from the company "leading the charge" or can you make your own?
The answers to those questions will determine whether I give a shit or not.
It looks like this is some kind of marketing ploy by this company, who apparently has designed some sort of embedded controller for wall warts that puts them to sleep after having no load.
Lots of devices are already powerable via standards like USB. They don't need this embedded controller to work, though it might make the transformer more efficient.
And more importantly, how are they involved? USB is already a standard. This isn't rocket science. The standards are already agreed upon. China managed to require a universal power supply, and they can't even get their human-rights in order. All it takes is one "standard device end", one "standard source end" and an agreement over what the upper and lower limits are! We have lots of those! Not just USB, either!
After the Wii2 comes the Wii3... which comes in a special "R" edition with a digital video recorder, and also comes packaged with the ever popular game, Kings of Orient, making it the Wii3/Kings of Orient/R.
That would've been funnier about a month and a half ago. =P
It also creates an instant organ donor, instead of lethally-injected kidneys and extra crispy livers.
China does this, and they have a lot of executions. Not saying they have the executions for the purpose of organ harvesting, but it would be a moral hazard.
If you really need organs, why not just remove the condemned's brain (and donate it to science), and put the body on life support until you can get the organs out. Keeps them fresher.
Pretty morbid, and again gives rise to a moral hazard, but also practical.
Those days are past. There are precious few parents old enough such that they have not gleaned any experience with computers by now. Those that haven't are well into their 80s and have more than likely lost interest in anything but pictures of grand kids.
Well, maybe not grandparents, but people who don't want to learn, or maybe aren't tech inclined. My grandfather is somewhat decent with computers, but my parents can barely click a mouse (even when told to, they ask "what?" and click slowly). I've run into lots of 20-somethings who can barely do anything besides open the default word processor (my girlfriend comes to mind). It's not an age thing.
Ok, EULA aside, how is this a bad thing? Come on,/.! I read all the time how terrible it is that ISPs throttle/shape bittorrent/p2p traffic and read the praises upon high at how efficient p2p is.
I think a lot less of the dipshit that took the picture and opted to give/sell it to a tabloid. Anybody with a half a brain could realize he could have blackmailed Phelps for a lot more money, and for a lot longer than the tabloid would pay. What a maroon.
No, you want an explanation? It's obviously a crank conservative movement to assert states rights as soon as they're no longer in power in the federal government. You didn't see a lot of conservatives howling about the Bush administration trying to go after medical marijuana and legalized euthanasia when west coast states tried 10th Amendment claims, did you?
I thought the Bush administration was wrong in this, and I'm really conservative in general. Don't paint such broad strokes.
"States rights" is pretty much the cry of the party who's losing in Washington. Very few people actually believe in it as a theory to be applied universally, and frankly they're not making the law.
I screamed "States rights" every time I heard about some frivolous law being passed by the Republicans when they were in power. If you really look at it, Republicans and Democrats (as far as parties go), are largely ideologically the same. And when there's only one candidate (symbolically), there's only one choice. It doesn't matter which party is winning or losing, since the winning one is going to trample states' rights anyway.
The states have rights because the United States is a state composed of smaller states. You should never say "The United States is". This is not a singular. Properly it's "The United States are". There's a very good reason for that. Look it up.
I see nothing wrong with letting children make up their own mind about what mumbo-jumbo they want to believe, as long as it isn't forced on them (by the parents or any other party)
Does this opinion apply to mumbo-jumbo fed by the public school systems? Or are you just applying this to non-secular situations? Schools/gov't don't let kids just walk out of schools because they disagree with
Or how about homeschooling? Many states already hate homeschooling and think it's horrible for the children, somehow. So, what's in the child's best interests if the parent refuses to let them go to public schools? Hmmm. That alone (government deciding how and what children are taught) is scary, as the education of a child is a HUGE deal.
Homeschooling is often just a way to maintain the "ideological integrity" of the child, please read that as "brainwashing". It also generally serves to "keep children clean from outside influences", please also read this as brainwashing, and as a stupid means to keep the kid from developing critical dissent from whatever crap the parents are trying to fill them with (generally some form of lunatic fringe religion). I'm confused by this, if your indoctrination is so damn strong and correct, then why would you be afraid of other ideas?
Wow. Pot. Kettle. Black.
If you ever read Animal Farm, Orwell makes the a case that the state is just as guilty of this. "Maintaining ideological integrity" as you put it can also be called "indocrination". This is a tactic governments use all the time to reinforce their authority and sanctioned viewpoint. "Keeping children clean from outside influence" is also known as "prevention of thoughtcrime".
Before you go spouting off about how religion is the tool of the devil and whatnot, remember that governments act as their own religion, and wish their own sanctioned ideology (whatever is current at the time) to override everything else.
Don't believe me? Look at Germany. Homeschooling is illegal there. Why? Because Germany wants to control the indoctrination of the children, using a law passed in 1938 under Adolf Hitler (before responding, this is not a reducto ad Hitlerum argument). Think the European Union is going to help? Not bloody likely. According to the quotation in the wikipedia article (I'll summarize) the children are technially the plaintiffs, and "children are unable to foresee the consequences of their parents' decision for home education because of their young age". The practical outcome of this is something like "The children want this, but they don't know what's best for themselves" so the state gets to decide. There's some more bullshit about one society and children having to learn to get along with it. Long story short, german law says the state gets to indoctrinate^Wbrainwash^W"maintain ideological integrity" in the kids, not the parents.
Before public schooling became absolutely compulsory in most western countries, kids were either homeschooled, schooled in small groups, or learned in the school of hard knocks. Society didn't crumble under all of this. A lot of people think it was better then.
On a more psychological level, school serves for more than teaching your kid how to read and write. It also socializes the child, equipping them with the mores and norms of the greater society, the norms and mores that we all require to successfully interact within that society. Children need this psychologically, or they do suffer actual psychological illnesses.
Note also the rise in socialist policies and tendencies in recent times. I don't think that's a coincidence. Socialist nations tend to exert tighter ideological control over the youth to ensure a steady supply of compliant individuals. And as demonstrated by the Soviet Union, people who don't agree with the established ideology at the moment are also suffering psychological illnesses (they'd have to be crazy to disagree with God^H^H^Hthe Government!)
you have no problem at all registering your criticism of your mythical police state here on slashdot.
"I can't tell you if it exists yet or not. That is immaterial. If we don't actively take measures to prevent the pre-conditions, it eventually will exist."
yes. if we don't actively develop and improve our police force, the natural tendency to lawlessness will accelerate. you seem to believe that the natural tendency of things is to accelerate to police state. no. the existence of civilization is something that is constantly being eroded and must be actively maintained from various forces which would otherwise destroy it. you seem to believe that civilization is the low energy state, and high energy effort must be exerted to prevent civilization from consuming anything that isn't pure conformity. this is ludicrous. your entire starting assumption is the inverse of reality. the natural tendency is towards lawnessness, not towards stifling rules
Then we need to stop exerting so many resources towards creating stifling rules. There are such things as false-ground states (local minima), even in our usage. Let me use an extreme example, presented in the form of a sort of game: free-will vs determinism. Let's say we have a way to activate and deactivate free-will (individually). Any individual can change the free will-status of any other individual. Now, let's say all of the individuals randomly switch statuses as long as they have free will. When they don't have free will, they only do what they're told/act according to mechanism. There are two ground states: a chaotic system (anarchy), and a mostly deterministic system (police state). Sure, you can change the rules a little so a few deterministic elements can switch other elements or themselves. The spectrum in between is normal. But if either of the two extremes is approached, you end up with a positive feedback loop that eventually takes you to the stable states.
if your complaints were 100% real, you wouldn't even have made the comment you just made, such would be your fear of reprisal and intrusion and punishment for registering your malcontent
"Don't think I don't consider that every time I write something. I'm willing to pay for my freedom. Are you?"
yes, i am willing to increase my taxes to hire more police to enforce the social framework in which i enjoy my freedoms. because i, unlike you, recognize a simple reality: lawlessness is more of a threat to my freedoms than the enforcement of my society's rules. my society's rules are ABOUT my freedom. when i am outside my society's framework, i don't have any of the freedoms my society enforces. it is only within society that the rules about your freedoms exist. with less police, with more anarchy, there is more transgression against your freedoms by random thugs and other mindless criminal behavior
I'm a big fan of self-defense. When you find someone in your house in the middle of the night, and the police are too busy with other things, do you just happily wait for them? I would wager you either handle it yourself, or attempt to proactively take measures to ensure you catch him later.
On the streets: In the common situation, if I'm looking to victimize someone, I check around for police. If I don't see any, I'm good to go. In self-defense-positive jurisdictions, the cop is there to keep the peace. If I look to victimize someone, all bets are off if the victim has the means to defend themselves.
The police should be a supplement to looking out for oneself, not a substitute.
do you believe the opposite? do you believe that, say your freedom of expression, is some sort of natural law granted by mere existence? ok, you go in the woods, outside of society, and you shout "i believe in evolution". and some guy comes out of the woods and says "i heard that. evol
"The Convention deals with the child-specific needs and rights. It requires that states act in the best interests of the child.
And how does the state decide what is in the best interests of the child? A lot of the social workers I've heard of (a personal friend who got a visit one time, and I would consider her to be an excellent mother) are pretty gung ho and get a lot of leeway to simply remove children preemptively, only returning them after a lengthy fight.
The Convention obliges states to allow parents to exercise their parental responsibilities. The Convention also acknowledges that children have the right to express their opinions and to have those opinions heard and acted upon when appropriate, to be protected from abuse or exploitation, to have their privacy protected and requires that their lives not be subject to excessive interference.
So, aside from the obvious protections, this document does a poor job defining any limits. It ends up being State Vs Parents Vs the Child. A three-way fight.
you have no problem at all registering your criticism of your mythical police state here on slashdot.
I can't tell you if it exists yet or not. That is immaterial. If we don't actively take measures to prevent the pre-conditions, it eventually will exist.
if your complaints were 100% real, you wouldn't even have made the comment you just made, such would be your fear of reprisal and intrusion and punishment for registering your malcontent
Don't think I don't consider that every time I write something. I'm willing to pay for my freedom. Are you?
The DNA would be submitted to the State Patrol and the FBI databases, which are used to match suspects with unsolved crimes. Under the bill, authorities would destroy samples and DNA profiles obtained from people who weren't charged, were found not guilty or whose convictions were overturned.
Can someone explain to me how a state law will force the FBI to destroy/delete these records, being that the states don't really have jurisdiction over the FBI?
"Matching suspects with unsolved crimes". That sounds dangerously like a fishing expedition to me. Maybe if they had a suspect already in mind, I wouldn't have a problem with this. Of course, if they did have a suspect in mind already, they could simply ask him for a sample (you know, like how they already do it). If he refuses, that's because he has a 5th amendment right to protection from self-incrimination.
simply stated, if law enforcement focuses on small, petty crimes, like turnstile jumping, graffiti, and shoplifting, they implicitly reduce serious crime, like burglarly, arson, murder
the idea works in two ways:
1. the public perception of lawlessness sends a signal that even worse lawless behavior is acceptable, so doping the reverse: focusing on the surface level impression of orderliness, actually increases real orderliness
No, the idea works because there is the perception of a police state.
2. you would be amazed how many rapists and murders also run red lights and shoplift. that is, routine screening of petty crimes (fingerprints in the past) has actually netted a surprising number of big fish (where big fish means any criminal who committed a very serious crime). people who commit trangressive acts against society don't really seem to be able to stop doing that
Remember, in 1984, Julia states "You can get away with breaking the big laws if you keep the small ones.
i'm not saying that dna tracking should be supported, i'm just framing the reason why law enforcement is interested in dna. as opposed to the mindless "everyone in government wants to fascistically monitor your entire life just because they are stereotypical hollywood characters" theory of government and law enforcement, that you frequently see as the basis for comments
Why don't you go ahead and submit your DNA pre-emptively. While you're at it, why don't you go ahead and get an RFID implanted in your hand? After all, if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, right?
Some of us just happen to desire privacy from gov't meddling on principle. When I go somewhere, I tell my folks/girlfriend where I'm going. I don't announce it to the police or gov't. Likewise, I don't care for the thought of every time some cop investigates every pissant who happened to leave some kind of biological evidence at the scene of a crime, someone checks that against me.
Slashdot Mirror
Not painful enough. But if his knees, elbows, wrists, and ankles got in the way of the server getting pounded?
You can pound whatever you want of him, but I'll score some of that sweet, sweet server-grade gear!
Speaking of human-rights, how nice of you to maybe -possibly-in-the-future-sometime-not-right-now give those prisoners you kept in Guantanamo a possibly-fair trial.
Hypocritical bullshit is what those backhanded judgmental insults to China coming from you is. Especially since they are basically your bank right now.
I'm calling "off-topic" here. The post wasn't about human-rights. However, there is a minor difference in your example from mine. Guantanamo bay prisoners were captured in foreign lands (most of them, anyway) under the pretense of war (let's assume this for the sake of argument). China, according to what I understand, has a general problem with its own people. Generally speaking, Guantanamo Bay prisoners aren't even US citizens. Your argument falls somewhat flat on that aspect. On the second point, Messiah Obama has decreed that the prison there will be closed within a year. China hasn't made any such declaration. Your argument is flat, like the tires on my bicycle.
Wouldn't it be more fun to go to their house and either serve them with a civil suit for a $Million+ or just beat their computer into a cube with a sledge hammer?
Wouldn't it be more fun to just beat the spammer to death with said sledgehammer? And since there would have to be millions with a motive to kill him, they'd have a lot of trouble pinning it on you.
I just have to make sure the court jurisdiction where I'm in trouble gets a major virus infection so that they suspend arrests for minor offenses (why are they making arrests for minor things?) and put off trials.
It's pure simplicity!
I can't help but think that Mr. Paine would, at least prior to January 20, have been considered some sort of terrorist, were he to have published "Common Sense" today.
Now, to be fair, since then, that's probably been downgraded to mere "criminal". Still, not the smartest thing to be voicing support for a dude who advocated the overthrow of the government of the United States, albeit of a different form than it is today.
That being said, I agree. (Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.)
No, I'm pretty sure he'd still be considered a terrorist. The Obama administration will not make anything better, and will probably make things worse.
FYI, he was considered a terrorist of sorts in his own time (a seditionist, actually) by the effective gov't, King George.
If Thomas Paine is "currently" wrong, then, baby, I don't wanna be right.
In spite of the right wing screeching about Obama being a far-left stealth candidate, he's a cleaner, more efficient Bill Clinton, without the personal ethical lapses to interfere with his objectives.....
Um...none that we know of...yet. You never know. Obama seems like a pretty upstanding guy, but so did Clinton at first. Anyway, to me, Bubba getting blow jobs from interns is his own business -- as far as I am concerned, if it put a smile on his face and enabled him to face the country's business in a more relaxed and less stressed frame of mind, all the better. It was the way he tried to fudge, obfuscate, and lie his way out of it that diminished his stature in my eyes. A flawed man, but we had a pretty good 8 years under him -- a fantastically great 8 years compared to the last 8.
Have you forgotten that he and the vice president has staffed the justice department with riaa/mpaa goons? Not only will this pass and become law here even if it violates the constitution, but there will be a roundup of file sharers afterwards.
Obama is just better at hiding his improprieties. He's a silver-tongued devil, if I ever saw one. Biden has been one of the biggest copywrong hounds out there, for years. Just pray Berman or Hollings never get into executive office. Those two are already dangerous where they are.
Maybe some of the more well-spoken amongst our numbers should've gotten out there and started bringing this shit to the attention of the unwashed masses before the elections. You know, all of those technically savvy college kids who inexplicably LOVE Obama because they're told to.
I'm normally a pro-lifer, but I think abortion really should've been encouraged in the past 25 years or so. Noone to make conservatives abort, but the liberals seem fond of it, so they would just cut down their numbers.
Don't blame me. I wanted Ron Paul to win (unfortunately any vote cast for him would've been a wasted vote). Neither of the two (uniparty) frontrunning candidates would've gone for what was best for me.
Is the chip design patented? Do you have to purchase from them from the company "leading the charge" or can you make your own? The answers to those questions will determine whether I give a shit or not.
It looks like this is some kind of marketing ploy by this company, who apparently has designed some sort of embedded controller for wall warts that puts them to sleep after having no load.
Lots of devices are already powerable via standards like USB. They don't need this embedded controller to work, though it might make the transformer more efficient.
And more importantly, how are they involved? USB is already a standard. This isn't rocket science. The standards are already agreed upon. China managed to require a universal power supply, and they can't even get their human-rights in order. All it takes is one "standard device end", one "standard source end" and an agreement over what the upper and lower limits are! We have lots of those! Not just USB, either!
Word has it that Duke Nukem Forever is being ported to run on Phantom OS.
After the Wii2 comes the Wii3... which comes in a special "R" edition with a digital video recorder, and also comes packaged with the ever popular game, Kings of Orient, making it the Wii3/Kings of Orient/R.
That would've been funnier about a month and a half ago. =P
It also creates an instant organ donor, instead of lethally-injected kidneys and extra crispy livers.
China does this, and they have a lot of executions. Not saying they have the executions for the purpose of organ harvesting, but it would be a moral hazard.
If you really need organs, why not just remove the condemned's brain (and donate it to science), and put the body on life support until you can get the organs out. Keeps them fresher.
Pretty morbid, and again gives rise to a moral hazard, but also practical.
Oh, stop with this older generation stuff...
Those days are past. There are precious few parents old enough such that they have not gleaned any experience with computers by now. Those that haven't are well into their 80s and have more than likely lost interest in anything but pictures of grand kids.
Well, maybe not grandparents, but people who don't want to learn, or maybe aren't tech inclined. My grandfather is somewhat decent with computers, but my parents can barely click a mouse (even when told to, they ask "what?" and click slowly). I've run into lots of 20-somethings who can barely do anything besides open the default word processor (my girlfriend comes to mind). It's not an age thing.
what will we do when these "tubes" become clogged, and we can't get our internets?
Fixed it for you, Convict Stevens.
Ok, EULA aside, how is this a bad thing? Come on, /.! I read all the time how terrible it is that ISPs throttle/shape bittorrent/p2p traffic and read the praises upon high at how efficient p2p is.
How is this any different?
I think a lot less of the dipshit that took the picture and opted to give/sell it to a tabloid. Anybody with a half a brain could realize he could have blackmailed Phelps for a lot more money, and for a lot longer than the tabloid would pay. What a maroon.
heh. I fixed it for you.
No, you want an explanation? It's obviously a crank conservative movement to assert states rights as soon as they're no longer in power in the federal government. You didn't see a lot of conservatives howling about the Bush administration trying to go after medical marijuana and legalized euthanasia when west coast states tried 10th Amendment claims, did you?
I thought the Bush administration was wrong in this, and I'm really conservative in general. Don't paint such broad strokes.
"States rights" is pretty much the cry of the party who's losing in Washington. Very few people actually believe in it as a theory to be applied universally, and frankly they're not making the law.
I screamed "States rights" every time I heard about some frivolous law being passed by the Republicans when they were in power. If you really look at it, Republicans and Democrats (as far as parties go), are largely ideologically the same. And when there's only one candidate (symbolically), there's only one choice. It doesn't matter which party is winning or losing, since the winning one is going to trample states' rights anyway.
The states have rights because the United States is a state composed of smaller states. You should never say "The United States is". This is not a singular. Properly it's "The United States are". There's a very good reason for that. Look it up.
I see nothing wrong with letting children make up their own mind about what mumbo-jumbo they want to believe, as long as it isn't forced on them (by the parents or any other party)
Does this opinion apply to mumbo-jumbo fed by the public school systems? Or are you just applying this to non-secular situations? Schools/gov't don't let kids just walk out of schools because they disagree with
Or how about homeschooling? Many states already hate homeschooling and think it's horrible for the children, somehow. So, what's in the child's best interests if the parent refuses to let them go to public schools? Hmmm. That alone (government deciding how and what children are taught) is scary, as the education of a child is a HUGE deal.
Homeschooling is often just a way to maintain the "ideological integrity" of the child, please read that as "brainwashing". It also generally serves to "keep children clean from outside influences", please also read this as brainwashing, and as a stupid means to keep the kid from developing critical dissent from whatever crap the parents are trying to fill them with (generally some form of lunatic fringe religion). I'm confused by this, if your indoctrination is so damn strong and correct, then why would you be afraid of other ideas?
Wow. Pot. Kettle. Black.
If you ever read Animal Farm, Orwell makes the a case that the state is just as guilty of this. "Maintaining ideological integrity" as you put it can also be called "indocrination". This is a tactic governments use all the time to reinforce their authority and sanctioned viewpoint. "Keeping children clean from outside influence" is also known as "prevention of thoughtcrime".
Before you go spouting off about how religion is the tool of the devil and whatnot, remember that governments act as their own religion, and wish their own sanctioned ideology (whatever is current at the time) to override everything else.
Don't believe me? Look at Germany. Homeschooling is illegal there. Why? Because Germany wants to control the indoctrination of the children, using a law passed in 1938 under Adolf Hitler (before responding, this is not a reducto ad Hitlerum argument). Think the European Union is going to help? Not bloody likely. According to the quotation in the wikipedia article (I'll summarize) the children are technially the plaintiffs, and "children are unable to foresee the consequences of their parents' decision for home education because of their young age". The practical outcome of this is something like "The children want this, but they don't know what's best for themselves" so the state gets to decide. There's some more bullshit about one society and children having to learn to get along with it. Long story short, german law says the state gets to indoctrinate^Wbrainwash^W"maintain ideological integrity" in the kids, not the parents.
Before public schooling became absolutely compulsory in most western countries, kids were either homeschooled, schooled in small groups, or learned in the school of hard knocks. Society didn't crumble under all of this. A lot of people think it was better then.
On a more psychological level, school serves for more than teaching your kid how to read and write. It also socializes the child, equipping them with the mores and norms of the greater society, the norms and mores that we all require to successfully interact within that society. Children need this psychologically, or they do suffer actual psychological illnesses.
Note also the rise in socialist policies and tendencies in recent times. I don't think that's a coincidence. Socialist nations tend to exert tighter ideological control over the youth to ensure a steady supply of compliant individuals. And as demonstrated by the Soviet Union, people who don't agree with the established ideology at the moment are also suffering psychological illnesses (they'd have to be crazy to disagree with God^H^H^Hthe Government!)
Utah still has(Had) a firing squad as method of execution until not long ago IIRC. Yeah, this is surprising /sarcasm
I think I'd rather be executed by firing squad than lethal injection or electric chair...maybe they're onto something.
If that's what happens with a "hardcore" vetting process, I'd hate to see who'd they nominate if they were going at it willy nilly.
They'd nominate Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, Usama Bin Laden, and Michael Vick.
Why is it so hard to find Democrat appointees who pay their taxes? Didn't Joe Biden say that paying taxes was a form of patriotism?
No, he said that paying your taxes is a form of patriotism if you're one of the little people who isn't on welfare.
you have no problem at all registering your criticism of your mythical police state here on slashdot.
"I can't tell you if it exists yet or not. That is immaterial. If we don't actively take measures to prevent the pre-conditions, it eventually will exist."
yes. if we don't actively develop and improve our police force, the natural tendency to lawlessness will accelerate. you seem to believe that the natural tendency of things is to accelerate to police state. no. the existence of civilization is something that is constantly being eroded and must be actively maintained from various forces which would otherwise destroy it. you seem to believe that civilization is the low energy state, and high energy effort must be exerted to prevent civilization from consuming anything that isn't pure conformity. this is ludicrous. your entire starting assumption is the inverse of reality. the natural tendency is towards lawnessness, not towards stifling rules
Then we need to stop exerting so many resources towards creating stifling rules. There are such things as false-ground states (local minima), even in our usage. Let me use an extreme example, presented in the form of a sort of game: free-will vs determinism. Let's say we have a way to activate and deactivate free-will (individually). Any individual can change the free will-status of any other individual. Now, let's say all of the individuals randomly switch statuses as long as they have free will. When they don't have free will, they only do what they're told/act according to mechanism. There are two ground states: a chaotic system (anarchy), and a mostly deterministic system (police state). Sure, you can change the rules a little so a few deterministic elements can switch other elements or themselves. The spectrum in between is normal. But if either of the two extremes is approached, you end up with a positive feedback loop that eventually takes you to the stable states.
if your complaints were 100% real, you wouldn't even have made the comment you just made, such would be your fear of reprisal and intrusion and punishment for registering your malcontent
"Don't think I don't consider that every time I write something. I'm willing to pay for my freedom. Are you?"
yes, i am willing to increase my taxes to hire more police to enforce the social framework in which i enjoy my freedoms. because i, unlike you, recognize a simple reality: lawlessness is more of a threat to my freedoms than the enforcement of my society's rules. my society's rules are ABOUT my freedom. when i am outside my society's framework, i don't have any of the freedoms my society enforces. it is only within society that the rules about your freedoms exist. with less police, with more anarchy, there is more transgression against your freedoms by random thugs and other mindless criminal behavior
I'm a big fan of self-defense. When you find someone in your house in the middle of the night, and the police are too busy with other things, do you just happily wait for them? I would wager you either handle it yourself, or attempt to proactively take measures to ensure you catch him later.
On the streets: In the common situation, if I'm looking to victimize someone, I check around for police. If I don't see any, I'm good to go. In self-defense-positive jurisdictions, the cop is there to keep the peace. If I look to victimize someone, all bets are off if the victim has the means to defend themselves.
The police should be a supplement to looking out for oneself, not a substitute.
do you believe the opposite? do you believe that, say your freedom of expression, is some sort of natural law granted by mere existence? ok, you go in the woods, outside of society, and you shout "i believe in evolution". and some guy comes out of the woods and says "i heard that. evol
Here is a quote
"The Convention deals with the child-specific needs and rights. It requires that states act in the best interests of the child.
And how does the state decide what is in the best interests of the child? A lot of the social workers I've heard of (a personal friend who got a visit one time, and I would consider her to be an excellent mother) are pretty gung ho and get a lot of leeway to simply remove children preemptively, only returning them after a lengthy fight.
The Convention obliges states to allow parents to exercise their parental responsibilities. The Convention also acknowledges that children have the right to express their opinions and to have those opinions heard and acted upon when appropriate, to be protected from abuse or exploitation, to have their privacy protected and requires that their lives not be subject to excessive interference.
So, aside from the obvious protections, this document does a poor job defining any limits. It ends up being State Vs Parents Vs the Child. A three-way fight.
you have no problem at all registering your criticism of your mythical police state here on slashdot.
I can't tell you if it exists yet or not. That is immaterial. If we don't actively take measures to prevent the pre-conditions, it eventually will exist.
if your complaints were 100% real, you wouldn't even have made the comment you just made, such would be your fear of reprisal and intrusion and punishment for registering your malcontent
Don't think I don't consider that every time I write something. I'm willing to pay for my freedom. Are you?
Can someone explain to me how a state law will force the FBI to destroy/delete these records, being that the states don't really have jurisdiction over the FBI?
"Matching suspects with unsolved crimes". That sounds dangerously like a fishing expedition to me. Maybe if they had a suspect already in mind, I wouldn't have a problem with this. Of course, if they did have a suspect in mind already, they could simply ask him for a sample (you know, like how they already do it). If he refuses, that's because he has a 5th amendment right to protection from self-incrimination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixing_Broken_Windows
simply stated, if law enforcement focuses on small, petty crimes, like turnstile jumping, graffiti, and shoplifting, they implicitly reduce serious crime, like burglarly, arson, murder
the idea works in two ways:
1. the public perception of lawlessness sends a signal that even worse lawless behavior is acceptable, so doping the reverse: focusing on the surface level impression of orderliness, actually increases real orderliness
No, the idea works because there is the perception of a police state.
2. you would be amazed how many rapists and murders also run red lights and shoplift. that is, routine screening of petty crimes (fingerprints in the past) has actually netted a surprising number of big fish (where big fish means any criminal who committed a very serious crime). people who commit trangressive acts against society don't really seem to be able to stop doing that
Remember, in 1984, Julia states "You can get away with breaking the big laws if you keep the small ones.
i'm not saying that dna tracking should be supported, i'm just framing the reason why law enforcement is interested in dna. as opposed to the mindless "everyone in government wants to fascistically monitor your entire life just because they are stereotypical hollywood characters" theory of government and law enforcement, that you frequently see as the basis for comments
Why don't you go ahead and submit your DNA pre-emptively. While you're at it, why don't you go ahead and get an RFID implanted in your hand? After all, if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, right?
Some of us just happen to desire privacy from gov't meddling on principle. When I go somewhere, I tell my folks/girlfriend where I'm going. I don't announce it to the police or gov't. Likewise, I don't care for the thought of every time some cop investigates every pissant who happened to leave some kind of biological evidence at the scene of a crime, someone checks that against me.